Hi Jack & ALL, While Jack's point (see below for Jack's point) may be at least partially valid, it is not relevant to the issue I was and am discussing - We CAN likely determine whether we are descendants of the families of Va Dare and of Poca. Any descendants of the FAMILY of Va Dare, should they exist, which is quite likely, and it isn't known by any accepted source, one way or another, whether there are or are not any DIRECT descendants of Va Dare herself, might be determined by dna testing, of the type I discussed (& see extended discussion below). If there were, such descendants of Va Dare herself, would probably also have a significant dna constituency of NA (Native American) dna, perhaps of the 'Croatoan' tribe or nation (as Jack noted, the 'message' carved in the Lost Colony tree). This tribe lived not too far (particularly by internal waterways) from the Powatan tribe of Poca, and from Jamestown. There is some, but definitely not dispositive, evidence of lighter skinned, lightered haired members of those tribes. But that is a digression from the Issue. The Issue is whether dna could assist in determining familial relationships to the families of Va Dare and of Pocahontas. Va Dare was the only daughter of the marriage of Ananias Dare and his wife Eleanor White, d/o the Lost Colony's chief, John White. Ananias Dare also had a son, John Dare, almost certainly not also a son of Eleanor, probably from a prior marriage. That has been established by a US federal govt study, a (flawed OCR) copy of the report of which I posted to the Dare-L List (and other sites) over a yr ago. In the Perogative court of England, two named men 'fought' legally over the right to be appointed as John's guardian. There are court documents, cited in the US study, in support of this genealogical fact. The point, the Issue, is that we do presently know of relevant dna avail from Poca descendants, and believe we will be able to establish direct dna descendancy from the family of Va Dare's parent's families, including of John and Eleanor White, and of Ananias Dare, including of his son, Virginia Dare's half brother John. While nothing is certain, the likelihood is quite significant that, if there are blood descendants of Poca & Va, we will eventually be able to establish them to a high degree of probability, if not absolute certainty. And the downside is near zero - actually, a few cotton tipped swabs of mouth saliva and $200 plus postage, is the 'risk'. I'm going to determine in a few months, depending on research results of the efficacy of these tests, whether to participate, depending whether the results could be used for familial determinations. Remember, the test results could also be used to refute a Gen line thought to establish your gen lines, or to call into question the 'purity' of your bloodlines. Some might be deterred by that possibility. In the meantime, there is an extended discussion of the kit and use of dna in Gen research below, along w/a Link for more info. Best, Barry On Sat, 9 Feb 2002 11:07:19 -0500 "JackVButler" <jackvbutler@worldnet.att.net> wrote: No, there is no chance that the Dare line that married into the Witherington line descends from Virginia Dare. There is, in fact, absolutley no evidence that anyone descends from her - she was still toddler when she, along with the rest of the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke disappeared. It is not unreasonable to assume that when their situation became desparate that the colonists left with one or another of the Indian tribes in the area. But later settlers never found any such evidence, and no one has any real clue as to what happened to them. But Barry clearly likes to think big and to go for the long shots <G>. Here is a blurb about Virginia Dare that I pulled from an on-line site: "The granddaughter of Governor John White, Virginia Dare was the first child born of English parents in the new world. The child's mother was White's daughter Eleanor. Her father, Ananias Dare, served as one of the Governor's assistants. Virginia was born on August 18, 1587, days after the colonists arrival on Roanoke Island. Her baptism on Sunday following her birth was the second recorded Christian sacrament administered in North America. The first baptism had been administered a few days earlier to Manteo, an Indian chief who was rewarded for his service by being christened and named ''Lord''. When Governor White was forced to return to England for supplies, Virginia Dare was less than a month old, and he left with heavy heart, never realizing that he would never see her or any of the other colonists who remained behind again. Leaving the new world and his family behind must have been difficult for White. A secret code had been worked out, that should they leave Roanoke Island, they were to carve their new location on a conspicuous tree or post. If the move had to be made because of an attack, either by Indians or Spaniards, they were to carve over the letters or name a distress signal in the form of a Maltese cross. Three years to the month later, White returned to find the word ''Croatoan'' without any cross or other sign of distress. To this day, no one is certain were the lost colony went, or what happened to them. " Extended discussion of the kit and use of dna in Gen research " ============================================================ Make Genealogy Discoveries through DNA ============================================================ MyFamily.com Inc, the leading company for connecting families, and Relative Genetics, a world-class genomics laboratory and leader in establishing definitive biologic relationships through DNA testing and analysis, have entered an exclusive partnership to distribute the Ancestry GenetiKit, the most complete and extensive DNA test available. The partnership and new product combine traditional genealogy with the latest technology making it easier to answer the question: "Where did I come from?" The Ancestry GenetiKit was introduced at GENTECH, the conference for genealogy and technology in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 25, 2002. 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